


A Scrap of His Tartan

by Cassandraic



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: ButterOmens, Feelings Realization, Idiots in Love, M/M, The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassandraic/pseuds/Cassandraic
Summary: Five times Aziraphale provided Crowley a token, and one time Crowley returned the favour.
Relationships: Aziraphale & The Bentley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 116





	A Scrap of His Tartan

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Path From Fire To Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23080645) by [lyricwritesprose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose). 



**The Garden of Eden**

At length the storm faded into the distance, grumbling as it merged with the horizon as though it wished it could have frightened and inconvenienced a Principality and a tempter demon _yet more_.

“You might wish to step aside a moment, there,” said Aziraphale politely, “before I shake all this water out and drench you with it.”

“Right, yeah, sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?” said Crawly, glancing up at the spotless wing over his head. So brilliantly had that wing guarded him from the sudden invention of weather that not a single droplet marred his vine-black linen garments. He shuffled out from underneath, unaccountably sorry to leave this ersatz shelter.

Aziraphale, too, stepped away, bare toes clutching a little harder at the unfamiliar clamminess of the wetted stone. Daring to turn his back on the desert now that there was nothing inside the Garden to guard, he beat both his wings against the still-heavy air, loosing a second smaller rain on the sands, which drank it down without reserve. As the angel tucked his still-damp wings away, a pinfeather came loose from one, a near-weightless bit of down too draggled from rain to stay affixed. An errant wind sent it dancing across the distance between angel and demon until it lodged unheeded in a fold of Crawly’s shoulder-cloak. 

Crawly did not notice it until awkward farewells had been said and he resumed his comfortable snake-form. The first instinctive release of his forked tongue to gauge the air brought him the faint balsam scent of the pinfeather from where it lay against his neck. Not even his serpentine spine sufficed to bring his muzzle around to it, so with a hiss of annoyance but infinite care, he brushed it off onto a fallen leaf from a black walnut tree. He smell-tasted it with flickering tongue then, grasping futilely at the wisps of blotted-out memory that rose even from such a tiny scrap of Heaven as this.

Rather than let the pinfeather blow away, Crawly carefully fang-punctured the walnut leaf with the left side of his mouth and carried it and its cargo to a small but deep hole in the Garden wall, where it would be safe.

* * *

**Mesopotamia**

The first raindrops began to fall. Humans surrounded the demon and the angel, so to Crawly’s tacit regret, there was no chance of a handy angelic rain-shield this time. Not, Crawly thought with a most unreptilian shiver, that even an angel’s wing could protect anyone from such a storm as Aziraphale had spoken of.

Well, the angel had one thing right: better not to think of it. Crawly cast about for a distraction, and did not have to search long. “Oi! Shem!” He flung an arm past Aziraphale’s nose. The angel prudently ducked away, but not before the demon’s flailing hand accidentally caught on one of the soft gold beads at the end of the angel’s tunic-ties. Lest he find himself fastened to Crawly with all possible dignity lost, Aziraphale crooked his pinky; the bead came loose, caught on Crawly’s ragged fingernail. The scrap of tunic-tie left behind looked a bit bereft, but it would just have to do.

Crawly did not notice, not just then. “That unicorn’s going to make a run for it! … oh, too late. Well, you’ve still got one of them.”

“It was a jolly nice try,” the angel said helplessly, after the fleeing beast had sealed its flooded fate among the low hills not far off.

“ _Not_ nice,” the demon snarled. “Maybe not as not-nice as this waterlogged rot, but don’t make me remind you again.”

The rain spattered harder against the good fertile earth. His heart sinking, Crawly bade the angel a brusque farewell and strode away. He pulled his hands back into the sleeves of his abaya, the better to pretend that She was not doing what he knew perfectly well She was doing; the bead fell off his fingernail and rolled into the sleeve hem. He only found it much later while regarding the inaccessible arc of the rainbow, restless fingers scratching through the still-damp fabric of his sleeve at his arm beneath.

* * *

**London**

Crowley yet lurked outside the Globe, idly scratching at one wrist with two fingers of the other hand, after Hamlet had drawn his final breath and Horatio summed up the carnage. Aziraphale emerged touching the outer corners of his eyes fussily with a linen square. “Wasn’t that just tremendously affecting?” he sighed.

“Was it?" Crowley asked, striding carelessly toward the corner. “Can’t say I noticed. Poncey git had it coming, you ask me, treating his mother and ladylove and old school chums like that.”

Aziraphale was so shocked he nearly failed to make the turn toward their favourite alehouse. At his hasty swing around the building on the corner, a button midway down his doublet caught on its ill-planed timber, all but tearing off. “Oh, f-f-f-fiddlesticks!” The dark blue button hung by a mere scrap of dark blue thread. Aziraphale tutted most put-outedly.

“Fiddlesticks, angel? _Fiddlesticks_? Who _says_ that?” Crowley rolled his head, since the effect of rolling his eyes behind his glasses would be quite lost on the angel. He cut the Aziraphalean knot by the simple expedient of severing the thread between fingernail and thumb, neatly catching both button and thread-scrap before they could fall to the ground. “Even that playwright of yours wouldn’t say ‘fiddlesticks,’ and _he_ thinks ‘nook-shotten’ is a word.”

Aziraphale’s put-outness melted into one of those sidelong hint-heavy smiles of his. “It’s meant to refer to you, you know, you unrepentant reptile.”

“Not sure if I should be flattered or vaguely disturbed. Here, quit fussing with that.” Crowley swatted Aziraphale’s hand away from the clot of thread where the button had been. One demonic finger-tap to the hem of the brocaded doublet, and a blue cloth button appeared as though it had never had the temerity to come unsewn in the first place.

If it was not, in sober truth, the _same_ button, and if the demon’s hand went to his belt-purse for a moment — well, the gratified angel said nothing about it.

* * *

**France**

Not even the finest crêpes were sufficient ballast for robust French wine. Crowley pulled coins from his well-concealed purse and let Aziraphale drink himself stutter-witted while staying as sober as he dared himself — one could never be sure which half-dozen hornets’ nests the oblivious angel had stirred up. The more sloshed Aziraphale became, the more his English slurred. Crowley relaxed his vigilance a trifle, sipping from his glass; from a distance, the angelic babble would sound not wholly unlike French.

“Whad’ya think, Crowley?” the wine-addled angel asked, staring owl-eyed at his emptied plate. “More’f the mushrooms?”

Crowley snorted. “Angel, you don’t know what you sound like. Get the ham, if you want savoury.”

“Jam?” Crowley elected not to clarify, so Aziraphale let the idea percolate through him, along with another gulp of wine. “Yes, I b’lieve you’re right. Def’nitely jam.” 

“You’ll regret it,” the demon prophesied dourly, but he made the order in flawless if disgruntled French. Aziraphale set to with undisguised gourmanderie, Crowley watching in undisguised fondness — the angel was three sheets to the wind; he would never notice. 

Crowley’s prophecy proved accurate: Aziraphale missed with his fork, sending a gout of vividly crimson rhubarb jam onto his lace jabot, the one part of his absurd aristo accoutrements that he had not had the heart to snap over to the Bastille’s executioner. “Oh, bother!” cried the angel. “Alien — Alençon lace, too. What a sham — shame, I mean.”

The demon sawed his index finger through the air, severing the stained strands from the unrestrained riot of openwork dripping from the angel’s throat. “It’ll do,” he said, snatching the stained scrap of lace away before Aziraphale could object. “Finish those and let’s get you out of this shake-up.”

“Well, I can’t wear it like that! I have stranders — _standards_.” Aziraphale scrabbled drunkenly at his neck, managing somehow to dislodge the remainder of the jabot, which he threw pettishly at a rather astonished Crowley. “Take that, wonder — underworld _diable_!”

So Crowley did.

* * *

**London, again**

The Soho early-evening air was not as weed-infused as it doubtless would be later. Aziraphale thought this just as well; at least he could keep a clear head, which he had the dispiriting feeling he would very much need. The weight of what he held in one hand should not have felt nearly as oppressive as it did. Of course the modest vessel was not so uncouth as to _slosh_ , but even so.

Crowley’s absurd aristocratic monster of an automobile loomed dark and large against the lights from restaurants and clubs. It was parked illegally, of course, daring any bobby anywhere to object. Much though the steel-framed behemoth frightened the angel — much though it appeared to _enjoy_ frightening him — it fit Crowley, looked after Crowley, fed Crowley’s unhealthy need to take needless risks, kept Crowley and even the pedestrians and velocipedists around it safe enough for the purpose. As for Crowley, it was said demons couldn’t love, but that was only said by _angels_ , and clearly no other angel had witnessed Crowley’s irregular adoration for the imposing machine.

The auto — the Bentley — enjoyed frightening Aziraphale, but in truth it had never harmed so much as a hair on his head. That had to mean it esteemed him somewhat, did it not? At least a little. The angel fetched up beside it, his folly shielded from sidewalk passersby by the Bentley’s sheer bulk. “Hello, old —“ Old boy? Old girl? Neither seemed quite right. “Old thing. I wonder if I might persuade you to a rather significant favour. I require a conversation with him, you see, and I should like to hold it unobserved. Might you open your door and permit me to await him here?”

The Bentley did him the courtesy of considering the matter, pensive metallic creaks and squeaks reaching his ear from somewhere in the bowels of the drivetrain. It waited precisely long enough for Aziraphale to feel inordinately foolish standing in the street beside it — and then the passenger-side door opened smoothly to him. “Oh!” he exclaimed, surprised at the indulgence. “Thank you.” He folded himself into the auto’s leather seat almost with reverence. The Bentley closed its door behind him agreeably.

If only the ensuing discussion with Crowley could have gone so well. They ended it more hurt, more confused, more divided than they had ever been. Aziraphale wished desperately he had thought of another way to put Crowley off, or managed to explain himself better, or — or — anything, anything at all for chagrin not to be threaded so rawly through every line of the demon’s lean corporation. Oh, wasn’t there _anything_ he could — The Bentley let its glove compartment fall slowly and silently open, unbeknownst to Crowley. If, perhaps, Aziraphale slipped in a scrap of his tartan where Crowley wouldn’t pay attention to it, that was nobody’s business but his.

* * *

**Hell**

Oh, it hurt. His head — Crowley’s head — someone’s head. Well, he's who's feeling it. Must be his head, then. Hastur had hit hard.

Forced upright. Extra-dire head throbs. A shove. Better stay up. Crowley wouldn’t fall. Floor’s revolting anyroad. No standards here. Staggering a bit, now. Crowley would stagger, for effect. Buzzing. Such irritating buzzing. Wait, it’s — words? “… accuszzzationzzz. Haszztur, sszztand forth!”

Snake-eyes blur everything. Colours off, too. Maybe that’s his head. Maybe it’s just Hell. Clammy, raw, noisome place. Hands cold. His trousers — Crowley’s trousers — someone’s trousers have pockets. Crowley uses his pockets. Worth a try.

What’s this? What _is_ this, brushing his fingertips with what feels like grace? How curious. Too big for lint, too — too complex, too many textures, a mystery the size of his thumb. A scrap of — can that be _lace_? Handmade Alençon lace, in a demon’s trouser pocket? Yes, yes, assuredly it _is_ lace, lace stretched onto some sort of cloth backing and tacked down. It is curled around a button, a cloth button, and a — a — a small rounded something, a bead perhaps? The curl of lace and cloth, it’s — wrapped, so tightly and carefully wrapped ’round with a fine thread below the button. Affixed between button and bead — well, how could any angel, no matter what face he had chosen to wear, ever mistake one of his very own pinfeathers?

Oh. _Oh_. Oh, Crowley. Oh, Crowley, for so long as that? And to leave this tiny abiding token with him? To risk this keepsake so long treasured, just to give him heart in this wretched sty?

Well, then. Time to earn the luck-charm, the knightly favour Crowley had bestowed upon him. Strike a pose. Head tilted, shoulders uneven, one hip outthrust, expression of wary disbelief. Yes, much better, much more Crowleian. Now, to make every syllable drip scorn. Casually, knowing the answer but intent on forcing them to manifest the horror they were minded to visit upon their best, Aziraphale drawled, “Is there anything I can say in my defence?”

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [ButterOmens remix-fest](https://n0nb1narydemon.tumblr.com/post/611808756218707968), inspired by the heartbreakingly kind “[The Path from Fire to Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23080645)” by lyricwritesprose. The sentence from which the title of this fic is drawn had to have my tears carefully blotted off it before it could take its place here.
> 
> In keeping with the ButterOmens event, I invite all and sundry to remake, re-media, rethink, riff off, or otherwise mess around with this. (M-rated or below, please.) I couldn’t do all the locales from the ineffable cold open without blowing the 5+1 structure all to Hell (which would displease Dagon no end), so if anyone would like to tackle a few more of them, that would be lovely! I also have no idea what Crowley did with the rest of the lace jabot, so if you know, do tell me.
> 
> Anachronisms and language notes: “Vine-black” is Roman, but I didn’t have much luck finding truly ancient black dye. “Fiddlesticks” is first attested in 1620, but some think it to be from around 1600, so I squeak in just under the temporal line there. It’s such an Aziraphale word I couldn’t resist, though. “Nook-shotten” is indeed a Shakespeare coinage (Henry V, written around the same time as Hamlet) as far as anyone knows — it’s used in reference to an island, not a person, but seriously, _look it up_. The earliest attestation of “three sheets to the wind” is 1821, but oh well.
> 
> My thanks to all the fandom’s wonderful screencappers, who helped me find believably removable bits and pieces of Aziraphale’s various outfits.


End file.
